He could see how her body shuddered in anguish, and her calling to the walls that would not listen; they were only made to silence. It was just as he'd expect, but now, he finally began his work in earnest. The fearsome knife sawed its way smoothly, albeit agonisingly slowly, up her leg as a single long incision. He moved with it until he finally pulled it back from her, letting the line stop where softer skin met the front muscle, though underneath, of her leg. Everywhere blood leaked, edging to escape from beneath the cut rag of scales, still attached to her for now. Zartear would not remove it yet, and with this one line finish it was only moment before he did exactly the same to her other leg, paying no attention to her cries other than that it pleased him. Well, it could have been prevented if she had spoke, but she had proven herself to be so insane...Oh who was he fooling? He would have flayed her anyway.

"Tabri, Tabri! Look at this fine coat you have!" He exclaimed, now, he might have made a new cut beneath where her tail had been, but that was getting ahead of himself, he walked around her again until he was beside her left front leg, and he looked down at her callously, putting the knife through to rest finely beneath her eye. "Roll to your side." He commanded, his voice uncompromising.

Even those dragons that had the worst reputation for toying with their food before killing it, it could not be labelled torture next to what Zartear did to Tabri. She screamed until the breath left her, then tried to still, her mind howling even if her voice was silenced. The pain in her back legs and the stump of her tail seemed to radiate across the whole of her hindquarters by the time that Zartear drew his knife away, even those scales he had not sheared from her body. It was just pain, unlike any she had known before, even when her hide had been scarred in fights or hunting, or by the dangerous hand of lesser men.

She felt her stomach heave again as he came to stand where she could see him, unable to drag her head from the floor for the agony of it all, although she could not rip her eyes from him now she could see. She hoped he would get vomit on his boots for standing so close, hurting her and threatening her with no respite. It was the only thing that might have touched him, when he had ripped out the back of her and she had been able to do nothing.Her eye looked down to the knife he held by her face, wishing she could move so much to push herself against it through the temple and have done. There was no movement in her chains however, and she started to feel… despairing? That all her words were bluster, blather, that he would do whatever he wanted.Stop. Back off. She couldn’t speak from her mouth any more for the agony, but projecting her voice for him to hear was still possible… just.

Zartear laughed shortly and sharply, his brows twitched with impatience as he looked away from her, breathing a deep suck of air through his teeth. Lowering his knife, he maintained his quietness, as if barely speaking at all."Do you, even now, believe you have any right to a make demands of me?" In a burst of anger he thrust the knife forward so it gouged into the eye socket of the dragon, just shallowly enough to not kill her. He withdrew the blade, slicing angrily again at the side of her face to create a deep wound beneath her eye too."To your side now!" He snarled loudly, for good measure he impaled her left forepaw which had come loose from underneath her so the blade lodged between her talons and tendons. Just as quickly he removed it, waiting for her to follow his command. "This is not just about you you foolish beast, refuse my demands and you will suffer the same fate, but then, so will all others of your kin. Especially those you hold closest to you. Or are you so shortsighted, so tremendously arrogant that you would let all of what you hold dear be skinned alive, in the same way, and outfit my whole armies in the hides of your kind?"

That was enough to make Tabri scream again, finding her voice with this new agonising pain and the sudden red, then black that was her vision leaving her in one eye. He was a monster, punishing her when she tried for mercy, however poorly worded she made it sound. She could taste blood in the corner of her mouth as well as bile now as it dripped along her cheek, every movement of her mouth and tortured expression sending waves of pain through her head. He didn’t relent at all either, pain after pain across her as he stabbed through her paw. Although he did not linger about his cuts, it seemed worse for the air that reached her quickly, the blood that gushed from under her scales and started to seep across the rest of them, reminding her of how much he was shredding her like it was a game.

They will… they will kill you… for what you… you do. Her voice was strained and her one eye left closed tightly in pain, cheek meeting the ground as she could not help but collapse her right leg down onto the ground completely, jaws open laxly as far as they would against the binding around them. She shuddered to feel the waves of pain at the movement, her hind legs feeling paralysed for it. Her wings pulled at a painful angle on her back for being pinned together, held in place by a ring that she had thought hurt earlier, but now seemed like so much less than that she felt in other places now.

Zartear pulled himself back up, tall and proud over the crippled dragon. From here on, there was not to be much delight as the fight had fled from her, which was both as it should be, and a bore for him. It now became a much more methodical and drawn out affair, as much as he shortened the time, there was no way to be overly speedy about it, nor would he wish it to be. Starting underneath the base of where tail had been, he made a cut on the soft underside, drawing the knife steadily in a line, moving about the leg to then continue up the underbelly of the dragon. This then continued further up to the dragon's chest but he persisted. At this point Zartear did not fear the claws of the dragon; she would be weak, faint with the loss of her blood, her fear and her pain...though it would also numb her. Edging his way about her, he drew the knife more slowly now as it made its lengthy slice, his fist gripping it hard so it reached up slowly, yet he did not quite cut her throat yet.He was silent all as he did this, looking over to make sure it all looked good enough, before proceeding to walk back to her upper hind leg. Now with two fundamental cuts in place, he could begin removing her skin, if only brutally, or perhaps especially brutally. His knife was hardly small enough to be efficient, nor was the job nearly as clean as it could be, but what of it? He pryed with the knife about her leg, cutting away the skin beneath the scales from the exposed joints of hers. Bit by bit, with each gradual and painstaking nip or slice, the shining black scales and their hide were drawn apart from her. Eventually he had finished on the one leg, the whole skin falling loosely over her bare leg like a heavy drape.

He pushed with the knife and his skillful hands to split apart the skin of her underbelly, working his way all along the length of her until it flared out thickly. Pale white skin, bruised purple and slices that drew blood were now her features, as her layers were torn away by the experience of a man that had spent much of his life in this.Briefly his eyes flickered up to watch how she might have been responding, perhaps she was already unconscious for all the pain, which would be a shame, but would not impede him.

Tabri could not see how Zartear moved back and forth along her body now, but she could feel it, feel every rent beneath her scales, every mutilation of her hide and every abuse of her body. The slow draw of his blade along her belly was so painful, it felt like he was splitting her into two pieces, and she knew there would be no life after this torture. No retribution for these things he did, no revenge for the death of the tiny beast she could not even see any more. Despair overwhelmed her, despair and the knowledge that the last thing she had seen from one eye his smiling face and plunging dagger, and the other the floor soaked in her own red blood. She could taste it in her mouth mingled with acrid vomit, her tongue lolling from her jaws onto the ground. She wanted to die and be spared and have her spirit flee back to the rest of Maledictus Eice so they could hear of her torturous death.

She couldn’t think at all as Zartear set to work again, her front legs and wings twitching at the pain as the only things that could move without utter agony consuming her. It grew along her belly as he worked, too skilled in what he did to let her die so quickly and be spared it, too skilled to cause so much pain that it was too much for her mind to handle and it shut down, granting her sleep. Instead she felt herself torn apart in spirit and body, her consciousness ripped into shreds so that she could think no more coherent thoughts. The only thing that consumed her now was to escape, to die and be away from this pain, to die and be free of it all. She could not see him, but she could feel the press of his hands, her hot blood against his cold skin, tearing her apart and prolonging this living death. Her limbs refused to move for her, but she tried anyway to get her front paws underneath her at least, achingly lifting herself a little from the floor before collapsing down again, her breath stopping for moments at the agony of it.

With the passing of time it became obvious that the dragon was deeply resilient and merely "asleep" in her mind, or already very much dead. He'd had conversations of greater intelligence with his broth. Nevermind any of that, with it made obvious that she was uncompromising, he felt no loss in all of this. Having now cleaned most of her skin with great mess and blood free from her, it was all over.He hadn't even had to break her wings, or cut out her tongue, what a pity. That did not stop him now from using his knife to cut away the joints and the far softer webbing that adjoined to the main body, until both wings, once illuminated with dazzling purple, were but merely black and leathery things which he pushed over her carcass.The same too had become of her elsewhere, wherever her bright purple had shown before the colour had faded either to a charcoal black, or her crystals...which now seemed translucent and white, far less spectacular than their animated selves before...but they still shone with great polish and were sizeable enough to look grand.

The dragon was dead, and he had not cut to her throat yet. She would not be for a trophy, so preserving her head did not matter, even with all its adornments. There were plenty of those on the main hide. Admiring his work for another time, he then stepped up toward her head, kneeling beside her, and resting a hand on the side of her face. He felt the roughness of her strong dragon scales, his fingers tracing a line on the width of her neck before he began to cut and saw with the serrated knife, applying great pressure with both hands, feeling the rake and friction of the bone and muscle.Eventually he felt it give and the dragon was decapitated, at last. Zartear hummed to himself, looking across her and the spills of so much blood marring the surface of the stone. He could tell just by taking note of the attention to detail in every facet of this room, that it was glad, that it was pleased to receive a blood offering after what must have been a very long time. This place, the Surselea, was built for such a thing and it amused Zartear, a smirk coming to him; that a man would be so mad to think of and build such a thing...but then realised he too agreed with whomever that genius was.

The rest of the hide would be removed by others, those spikes were indented too far into the carcass for him to waste any more time on it now, especially when the dragon had already perished.Picking himself up, he let the weapon pull back discreetly to a charred stick and he retired from the corpse. With a nod of approval he walked away from it to fetch workers, kicking back the little snake to join the head of the crazed dragon as he went.

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Dragons' Cove

An island (that is more of a continent) that is completely cut off from the world it is placed in. If the foreigners are anything to go by, it may be the only innately magical part of the world, feeding out to other areas. It has a delicate balance, and its nature changes depending on the actions of its inhabitants.

This makes it either perfectly pleasant or bitterly brutal to live on, depending on your era. Explore its history with caution, but take time to stop and appreciate it as well.